April 21, 2010
The elements that make you — the calcium in your bones, the oxygen in your lungs — were scattered across space by dying stars long before...
Wide Angle: The Cat's Paw Nebula
Birthday · April 21, 2010
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APOD published April 21, 2010. Full image credits are on the original APOD entry below. A publication-date match, not a photo taken on your date. Independent of NASA.
Nebulae are perhaps as famous for being identified with familiar shapes as perhaps cats are for getting into trouble. Still, no known cat could have created the vast Cat's Paw Nebula visible in Scorpius. At 5,500 light years distant, Cat's Paw is an emission nebula with a red color that originates from an abundance of ionized hydrogen atoms. Alternatively known as the Bear Claw Nebula or NGC 6334, stars nearly ten times the mass of our Sun have been born there in only the past few million years. Pictured above, a wide angle, deep field image of the Cat's Paw nebula was culled from the second Digitized Sky Survey.